There’s a great account on twitter, @BRefPlayIndex, that if you don’t follow, you should if you consider yourself a baseball fan. They often tweet out great nuggets of information about great seasons players have had that you may have forgotten about, along with other great nuggets (and the occasional giveaway.
So when they tweeted this the other day, it was just another nice nugget:
In @MLB history, players with 20+ 2B, 20+ 3B, 20+ HR, & 40+ SB in a season: 2007 @Phillies Jimmy Rollins (@JimmyRollins11) 38/20/30/41
— MLB Play Index (@BRefPlayIndex) November 27, 2013
But then this was tweeted as a response, and I did some digging:
@BRefPlayIndex And yet there were what, 5 NL position players who out-WARed him? #MakeWalksNotOuts
— Craig Glaser (@sabometrics) November 27, 2013
My conclusion? David Wright got hosed.
Jimmy Rollins put up 6.4 fWAR in 2007, seventh in the National League. David Wright led the National League and was second in all of baseball with 8.4 fWAR that year.
While that’s not even close to the gap between Mike Trout and Miguel Cabrera, a two-win gap is a two-win gap. Albert Pujols, Chase Utley, Matt Holliday, Chipper Jones and Alfonso Soriano also had more WAR than Rollins, in some cases, in 30 fewer games played.
To expand the argument past WAR, Rollins put up a .296/.344/.531 line, compared to Wright’s .325/.416/.546. Jones put up an impressive .337/.425/.604, Holliday .340/.405/.607. Rollins’ wOBA was .371, tying him with Carlos Lee for 23rd in the NL. Everyone else that finished with a higher WAR (other than Soriano) was over .413 and in the top 6.
Rollins’ 119 wRC+ was 27th out of 75 qualified hitters. Once again, everyone else except Soriano was in the top 6, with results ranging from 150 for Utley to 163 for Jones.
Rollins was, however, able to make up ground by being an excellent baserunner and having an excellent glove. His 11.2 Baserunning Runs were second in the NL to Juan Pierre, but Wright was not far behind with 6.8. Rollins’ Fangraphs defense score was 10.0, just ahead of Wright’s 8.7.
Neither of the other candidates possessed both the baserunning and defensive acumen of Rollins and Wright (although some were as good in one category or the other).
To say that Rollins and Wright were the best-rounded players in the NL in 2007 would not be false.
So once you’ve narrowed down the candidates to those two, it becomes nearly impossible to objectively look at the numbers and say that Wright did not deserve the MVP. He had arguably the best offensive season in the NL that year, and had a plus glove and plus plus baserunning, which nobody else with comparable offensive numbers had.
But of course, we all know the reason Wright didn’t win the MVP: the Mets choked down the stretch, and the Phillies got into the playoffs, so Wright gets punished.
By the way, in September 2007 Wright hit .352/.432/.602 with 6 HR, 20 RBIs, and struck out 10 times in the entire month.
Joe Vasile is the voice of the Fayetteville (NC) SwampDogs and host of “Ball Four” on WTSR in Trenton. Follow him on twitter at @JoeVasilePBP.
Wow – I had forgotten how good Wright was that year! Truthfully, when I think of 2007, the monumental collapse eclipses everything else, and in retrospect there can be little doubt that the Mets’ current prolonged period of darkness and despair began with that terrible September. (Some might argue it began with Carlos Beltran watching the called strike 3 in the ’06 NL Championship, but ’07, minus the month of September, was a far better year than we’ve seen since.)
I think of David Wright as being an almost tragic character in some respects. Missing out on the MVP in ’07 because his team fell on its collective face right at the finish line, even though he himself played great baseball throughout the month of disaster, is certainly part of it. There is also the fact of his playing his prime years for a team going nowhere but down to the bottom, and his getting beaned by Matt Cain and then coming back having to wear that comically awful over-sized helmet while standing as far away from the plate as possible, and his having no protection whatsoever in the lineup for the last 2 seasons, and his stint as “Captain America” on the US National Team being cut short by injury right when he was finally getting some of the attention he deserved for being the standout player he is, and his great comeback season last year being interrupted by the hamstring injury… The guy has paid some dues.
Giving Wright the big contract was probably one of the best things the Wilpon administration ever did, although they would have been total idiots not to. They owed him at least that much for keeping their team from being a complete clown show. Now if the Mets can only build another contending team around him before his skills start to decline, perhaps Wright’s hard luck story can have a happy ending.
You are absolutely right on about the extension being one of the best things Wilpon/Alderson has done. And I hope you’re right about his story having a happy ending.
Thank you for the kind words – nicely done.